"I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it." -- Trump, 12/11/18

Words of Advice:

"Never Feel Sorry For Anyone Who Owns an Airplane."-- Tina Marie

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

"Flying the Airplane is More Important than Radioing Your Plight to a Person on the GroundWho is Incapable of Understanding or Doing Anything About It." -- Unknown

"There seems to be almost no problem that Congress cannot, by diligent efforts and careful legislative drafting, make ten times worse." -- Me

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Don King is standing next to Our Overlord-Elect; take a look at the flag King is holding:

That's a Russian flag.

I assume that nobody in the room was stupid enough to allow King to stand next to The Donald and not know what flag King was holding.

But you won't hear anything from the Right about this. Yet you know if someone stood next to Obama at a press conference at Camp David and that person was holding a Kenyan flag, that the Wingnuts and Trump would have been all over it.

I know of at least two same-sex couples that are changing their wedding plans so that they get married on January 20th. They're doing it both because they are concerned that Trump will do something to repeal their right to marry and as a bit of a one-fingered salute to the new president.

Thursday, December 29, 2016

First off, I have some qualms about digitally digging up Peter Cushing, who has been dead for two decades, and using his likeness for the movie.

Second, as I watched the movie, I kept wondering just what the big deal was. It did close the original question of why the Death Star had such a flaw built into it.

It seemed formulaic and overdone. And there were a few things, such as an iris-type hatch that was slamming open and shut, that seemed like something cheesy out of Galaxy Quest.

OK, so Lucasfilm and the Mouse printed money from this one. By Hollywood standards, that's all the reason needed.

But the original Star Wars movie was both a damn fine movie and it was fun to watch. Lucas and the others have been trying to recapture that lightning ever since. While Rogue One is nowhere near as sucky as The Phantom Menace, it's more of a tribute to CGI than anything else.

Bottom line: Unless you're a dedicated Star Wars fan, you may want to wait for it to come out on cable.

Also: They're remaking The Mummy with that lift-wearing midget. From the trailer, it does not appear to be anywhere near as enjoyable as the 1999 version.

Of course, the point that the September forecasts for Xmas spending were consistent with what happened makes no difference to The Grifter-Elect.

He's taking credit for good things that happen before he's in office; it's a safe bet that if the economy stutters in the next four years, he'll lay the blame elsewhere. It's what he does and the Trumpanzees will fall right in line.

One change that a few friends have seen is that if a doctor writes a prescription for a specific drug without restricting it, CVS would fill it with the generic equivalent. That had the benefit of saving people from paying higher co-pays.

Walgreens isn't doing that.

If you have Tricare, you'll need to ask the pharmacist when you go to pick up the prescription (since most prescripts are submitted electronically) whether or not it could be filled with an equivalent that is in Tricare's formulary. If you don't, you're going to get stuck for a higher copay.

There are plenty of stores that don't operate in covered malls. And there is always online shopping-- both of which would lessen the chances of being caught up in a brawl being staged by a bunch of bored punk-ass kids, who should be at home, raiding their parents' liquor cabinets.

One of the basic rules of personal security is to avoid places where there are stupid people doing stupid things. If the malls' operators can't get a handle on this, they might as well consider closing down when school is out of session.

All of those electronic personal assistants are listening devices that the users have agreed to put in their homes and/or offices. It should be no surprise to anyone that various government agencies would want to access the data from those bugging devices.

A 44oz snubbie seems a bit much, but WTFDIK. The S&W 627 8-shot snubbie is the same price and six ounces lighter. Go a couple of hundred more and you can get a Model 327 that has the same round count and is 20oz lighter than the Redhawk.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Hanukkah or Chanukah, or however you want to spell it, begins at sundown today.

So here is the obligatory video from Adam Sandler:

Hanukkha is not exactly a major Jewish holiday.* In most of the rest of the world, it's not really remarked upon. But it's celebrated in America, mainly as a holiday for the children so they can participate, if only in a small way, in the orgy of consumerism and greed that has become Christmas.
_____________________________________________*If you look closely at most Jewish holidays, including Passover, the recurrent theme is "those motherfuckers tried to kill us back in the day, but we're still here and they ain't."

Tasers have been sold, all along, as less-than-lethal self-defense tools. They weren't designed to be used for torturing people.

The family isn't happy with the sentence for the one jerkoff convicted on a charge of involuntary manslaughter, among other beefs. Apparently the max for involuntary manslaughter in Georgia is ten years, and since those cops essentially tortured Mr. Towns into a grave, eighteen months does seem a bit light.

Jesus, Kellyanne, the campaign is over. The election is over. Your guy won (though three million more voters preferred the opponent). Comparing what Trump does to Clinton only makes Trump look like a petty little man.

Which is a characterization with which I have no problem. As you might have imagined.

In this year, an Airing of the Grievances may not be a wise idea at a family dinner. It'd be nice if the holiday could be about friends and family and not about consumerism-on-afterburners. But I guess that's what Thanksgiving is for.

It's a good thing that I'm not a Christian. For if I was, the idea that the celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace (a man who from his birth to his death, lived a humble existence) has become an orgy of consumerism and greed would sadden me to my core. But I'm not, so fuck it.

Trump's new trade advisor, Peter Navarro, has called upon American consumers to boycott Chinese goods. Which pretty much most everything Wal-Mart and Target sell, other than groceries. Trump's billionaire class, the oligarchy, has been more than complicit in the hollowing out of the American industrialbase. Why would Trump want to spark a trade war with the very country that has enriched his buddies?

Diesels are like Glocks: Practical and soulless. Can you imagine somebody standing out in the cold to shoot footage of a diesel train running through the snow? Me, either. (Anyone who would probably needs to be on a Thorazine drip.)

RUMINT is that Ruger will soon come out with variants that have longer barrels. A four or five inch barrel would make a good field gun. A 4.2" barrel would make the gun available to our northern friends in a bit more hoplophobic nation.

I'd normally not bother with rumors, but the source was accurate the first time around.

Icahn's been a corporate pirate for decades. He is as much a psychopath as "Chainsaw Al" Duncan, men who demolish companies in the name of "shareholder return".

Icahn has never given a fuck about anyone, especially the legions of workers who were "displaced" when he "maximized shareholder value." Look for him to recommend cutting regulations that protect those who earn paychecks.

The looting of the middle class continues, a process that began under St. Ronnie and continues apace. You can bet that while the press is following Trump's Twitter hot mess, that the GOP will race ahead with their plan to gut Social Security and Medicare.

Right, fundraising for unspecified conservation organizations. Given their father's history of rather flexible use of charitable donations for his own self-aggrandizement, one would be advised to be extremely skeptical of events such as these.

Little One was the last of a line; she was the younger sister of Gracie, Sweetie and Rocky. She had first been adopted by a friend who had other cats (Teddy and Rocky), but they had a bit of a personality conflict with Little One, so Little One went to my friend's daughter. Little One soon bonded with one of her other cats and things were good for a lot of years.

She developed blood in her urine. Antibiotics didn't clear it up. The vet's best guess was that Little One had either bladder or kidney cancer. Age sixteen is pretty old for a cat, especially if the prognosis calls for fairly aggressive procedures.

As noted, the so-called "Freedom Party" was founded by Austrian Nazis after the war. That a senior Trump functionary is meeting with Austrian Nazis and getting into position to make kissy-face with Russia is rather interesting.

That low whirring sounds that can be heard in California and Wisconsin are Ronald Reagan and Joe McCarthy spinning in their graves.

Russia in Syria, under the guise of "fighting terrorism", has engaged in aerial butchery of a scale not seen in a very long time. There are allegations that the Russians have deliberately attacked schools and hospitals. Which may be why Russia withdrew from the ICC.

It's probably an open secret that the Electoral College was really created to give outsized voting power to slave-holding states. And maybe the President should be chosen by majority vote.

But it's not going to change. A change would require amending the Constitution, which takes the approval of the legislatures of 38 states (3/4th). If the Electoral College was eliminated, future elections would be fought in places where most people live.

Which means that you'd have to get a hell of a lot of states to agree to a change that would ensure that, come the general election, nobody would ever give a shit about their issues.

The .44 GP100 ships next week, the .357 Redhawk in January. I don't know the MSRP on the Redhawk.

I've always heard that the reason for fluting the cylinders was to reduce the rotational mass. When you work a revolver hard, the cylinder slams to a stop against the bolt. Maybe it's not that important a consideration.

A 3" GP100 in .357 weighs 36oz, the .44 should be around that range. That's doable for carrying on a sturdy belt. Purse-carry, not so much.

Anyway, I do like the .44 Special round. I carried a Smith 696 "no dash" for awhile, until the used value of those guns crossed into the low four-bill range. Carry guns, to my mind, are tools. They get used and somewhat abused. It makes little sense to carry a gun with any serious collector value. So I am interested in this new GP100, especially if/when the street price drops a bit below MSRP.

On the other hand... I'm not at all clear as to what the GP100-.44 will do that can't be done with a 2.75" Smith & Wesson Model 69. It'd be a no-brainer if S&W would only get rid of that stupid lock.

Because he tries to escape, I have to go to and from my home through the garage. I installed a keypad for the garage door, so I can do things like go for a walk, or have friends feed him while I'm away, without the need to pass around garage door openers.

Yet, according to the Federales, there are 269 of them. Some of the discrepancy may be that there are 74 of them with registrations in Kansas and of those, 62 are registered to Cessna. As far as I can tell, from scanning the owner registries, Cessna has 69 162s registered to them.

It still was an expensive crump for Cessna. At one point, Cessna claimed that they had a thousand orders. But there were a boatload of other LSA companies that made airplanes that were and are much cheaper and often nicer, as well.

The jury was out for less than two hours. So they selected a foreman, had lunch, and then took a vote and that was it, I'd guess.

I'll hazard a guess: It will take the jury about the same amount of time to send him to Death Row.

The really delicious point was that the Asswipe of Charleston was trying to push a neo-nazi pro-Confederate point of view, but he succeeded in breaking the logjam over removing the Flag of Traitors from the South Carolina statehouse.

The Republican birthers ginned up a fact-free controversy, based largely on racism. There was no uniting behind President Obama for the good of the country. In point of fact, the GOP pretty much declared war on him on the evening of January 20th, 2009.

What we have is that the Russians, under the personal direction of Vladimir Putin and with the de facto connivance of the FBI, interfered in our election. That interference was egged on by Donald Trump.

I'm sure they'll happily tell everyone how choosing the CEO of the biggest of Big Oil will be good for the paycheck-earners of this country.

Trump isn't draining the swamp. He's no more than another Republican who is determined to make sure that the top 0.1% gets richer and richer, while everyone else gets poorer and poorer and those in the future are stuck with the bill. You birds on the Right thought that you were getting a populist, but you got just another corporate statist.

At this point, if Donald Trump and Gen. Mathis take a meataxe to Ft. Fumble, I will do little more than cheer them on. All across the board, the services can't run programs worth a fuck. The Army has made a hash of the M9 pistol replacement program and they so fucked up the M4 replacement that the decision was made to stick with that little carbine. The Tri-Service F-35 has been a serious clusterfuck. The Air Force's KC-46 program has been a horror show. The F-22 program was so delayed and so over-budget that the planned buy went from 650 airplanes down to 187 airplanes. The B-2 went from 132 airplanes to 21. The Navy's fuckups (LCS, LPD-17, USS Zumwalt, USS Ford) are the stuff of legend.

Here's one example: The initial design requirement specs for the F-22 took up almost 90 pages in the 1980s. The Army's design requirement specs for the replacement pistol ran 357 pages.

Much of this is basically embedded dishonesty bordering on corruption. The services and the contractors lowball the program costs and far underestimate the time it will take to design, test, make and deploy the gizmos. They do that because Congress essentially lets them get away with it. Then when the inevitable 250%+ cost overruns take place and it takes five times as long to get the gizmos into service, Congress is shocked, shocked.

Both the Congress and the press pretend, each time, that it's epic mismanagement and failure to control costs. They blithely ignore the plain truth that the system is working exactly the way that the services and yes, the Congress, intend it to function.

So at this point, one might well conclude that poorly-managed procurement programs are not a bug, but a feature.

Canada did the same thing and, arguably, did it with more severity. The Canadians effectively made the internees pay for being interned by seizing their property and selling it off- everything from land to clothing. Many of the internees were housed in inhuman conditions and effectively used as slave labor.

After the war, Canada sought to deport Canadian citizens of Japanese origin. Nearly 4,000 people were stripped of their citizenship and departed to Japan. The Canadians eventually gave up on that, but they restricted the rights of Canadian citizens of Japanese origin until four years after the war ended. Initial compensation for confiscated property was minor, at best.

As in the States, things began to change in the 1980s. Those who were deported and were still alive in 1988 had their Canadian citizenship restored.

The writing was on the wall once Trump picked Reince Priebus as his chief of staff.

Anyone who had paid close attention to Trump's business career would have realized that he has no loyalty to anyone, other than possibly his children. But no, they all drank the bug juice and now they're learning about Trump the hard way.

Which means that if they want to trade in, they have to come up with five grand, cash, to pay off the loan.

The better choice is to not go the consumerist route and keep the car/truck/SUV until the wheels are about to fall off. A paid-off car costs you gas, insurance and, if you're smart, preventive maintenance.

Well, no worries. Trump's such a good negotiator, he'll Twitterize this problem in nothing flat.

UPDATE: Secaucus Fats reportedly also had his eye set on one job and, like Rudy, he opted to play "this one or no other" with The Donald. Trump understands who has the power in negotiating such a deal, and it wasn't either Christie or Giuliani.

Expect the stalwart investigative committees in the House of Representatives to take zero interest in looking into this. (They would have spent millions to investigate Clinton for improperly removing a hangnail.) After all, Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz are first-rate political tools, and not the kind that one can buy at Harbor Freight.

No doubt that the Apologists for The Donald(tm) will be all over social media and the talk shows to explain why this isn't just another example of Trump butt-ficking his supporters. They might as well have elected Lloyd Blankfeld, Jamie Diamond or Angelo Mozilo.

In other words, a guy from an industry that has thrived on paying people as little as possible and is rife with complaints about wage theft and otherwise screwing over workers. This is the guy who is going to work to protect the rights of workers in the Grifter Administration.

All the wage-earning folks who rallied for Trump and bought into this "make America great again" hype are about to feel that cold shiv coming in between their ribs.

I was at a party when a retired military officer began exclaiming: "After VE Day, we should have allied with the Germans to crush the Soviet Union." I kept my yap shut because the party was being held in a good friend's house. I don't like to cause scenes in private spaces.

But Sweet Mother of Bastet, when is this old tired line of John Bircher horseshit ever going to die out? Other than those mouth-breathing morons, does anyone truly believe that the American people had an appetite to try and conquer the USSR?

Look at the distances involved in both fighting such a war and logistically supplying the conflict. Look at the number of men the Germans committed to the Eastern Front-- in comparison, the amount of men they committed to fight the Western Front against the Anglo-American forces was almost paltry.

The American people were solidly behind the war effort because the perfidious Japanese had attacked us and the Germans had declared war. The American people were willing to do what it took to win. Americans wanted their men to come home in 1945, not engage in another tough war. Attacking the Soviet Union would have been an act that surpassed the Japanese for treachery.

It would have been akin to Wyatt Earp shooting Doc Holliday in the back immediately after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The American people would have never stood for it and certainly wouldn't once the butcher's bill began coming due.

Those who believe such a war would have been a good idea, let alone winnable, probably should be living in a padded room with an IV feeding them a mixture of thorazine and morphine.

Lots of people complain about government monitoring emails, text messages and phone calls. There are fairly simple steps that one can take to preclude that. But hardly nobody does.

Telegram and Signal provide end-to-end encryption of text messages. Signal encrypts phone calls. There are open-source PGP programs for encrypting emails and attachments. Telegram and Signal are stupid-easy to install on mobile phones. The PGP programs take a little more effort, but about as much as installing any other software. Then there are add-ons for most email programs to make using PGP encryption almost seamless.

But here's the thing: Nobody really uses them.

It's like complaining that the mailman is reading your mail, but you won't be bothered to seal up the envelope. or carping about your neighborhood watch patrol coming into your house, but you won't lock the doors.

If you complain about government snooping, but then you make it easy for them to do it, the fault is, at least a little, on you.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

I don't know about you, but I'd be a bit more pleased if he got to work on learning some of the ropes of his new job. Because it sure seems that with his inexperience and unwillingness to learn anything, not to mention his willingness to do the bidding of sycophantic suckups, that he's going to clown-foot us into a diplomatic crisis, if not a fucking war.

Tha amount of detail that is contained in the story makes me wonder if they got off cheap.

When I was in da Nav', it was impressed on us that illegally discharging contaminated waste would result in a $25,000 fine being levied personally against both the chief engineer and whomsoever was actually responsible. Supposedly there was one lieutenant commander who was paying off such a fine at $250 per month.

I have almost zero doubt that a Justice Department run by Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III will not hesitate to drop the associated civil rights case.

This is what also drives me a little bonkers about the "Blue Lives Matter" crap. Cops' lives have always mattered. In most places, a person who assaults or kills a cop is going to be sent away for a lot longer time than if they had done the same deed to a somebody who is not a police officer. If you had a concealed weapons permit and you shot a fleeing man in the back after a fight, you would be headed to prison for a very long time.

But not if you're a cop, especially if you're not a cop in South Carolina. (Especially if you're willing to get on the stand and give a story that is completely at odds with the video of the crime.)

So this is where we are heading, people: An administration run by people who buy into conspiracy theory and fake news bullshit. Flynn has a reputation for believing in what his gut tells him and then ordering subordinates to come up with the proof to justify his feelings.

In other words, we're in for a lot more of the Bush-Cheney bullshit where wars are started because of what the people in charge feel is true, not what is actually true. They're the worst kind of grifter: One who believes his own con.

Sunday, December 4, 2016

I went to the range to do a comparison. I have a Ruger Convertible Blackhawk in .357/9mm. I take it out every couple of years to shoot, but I had never shot the 9mm cylinder. The targets below were shot with .38 158gr lead round noise and 115gr ball for 9mm.

The 9mm felt a tad bit more sporty. I wasn't sure if it would be accurate to any degree, as essentially, more than half of the 9mm cylinder is a smoothbore barrel. The bullet has to travel a ways before it engages the rifling and when it gets there, 9mm bullets are a couple of thousandths undersize for a revolver barrel. Maybe if I had fired from a rest, I might have seen more of a difference.

The reason that I went to the range was to shoot this new acquisition:

That is a Smith & Wesson Military and Police Model of 1905, 4th Change. It was a cop's gun, one who got to keep his issued gun when his department upgraded to possibly Model 19s in the late 1960s. I haven't researched the serial number, but possibly it dates from Roaring Twenties. The mechanicals were excellent (timing was good, no endshake, firm lockup) and the bore was bright. A S&W expert will note that the backside of the front sight has been modified from a half-moon to an angled flat face. The well-worn grips are postwar diamond magnas. And, as you can readily see, the gun spent a lot of time in holsters.

The price was stupid-cheap, at a point that I'm not going to pass by a solid K-frame Smith. Let's just say that it was cheaper than those cheap-jack Filipino guns and leave it at that.

The sights, compared to a later Model 10, suck. But they are good enough for me to keep it in "minute of thug", shooting one-handed double-action at fifty feet. It did twist a little in my hand; I'll have to buy a grip adapter if I'm going to shoot it very much.

As for the "dinosaur" bit, after I went off the range, a bunch of people came in and soon all of the lanes were full. Everyone was shooting a version of those self-littering bottom-feeders.

Which is probably why I could buy a ratty-looking five-screw Smith for the price that I paid for it.

Trump has been displaying the thin skin typical of a Middle-Eastern despot, such as Saddam Hussein.[1] If he can't the level of satire and mocking that Americans typically dish out to politicians, then this is going to be a rough few years.
____________________________________________[1] Or Richard Nixon.

The silence from the Right is deafening. Oh, imagine the uproar you'd be hearing from the quiescent conservatives if the election outcome had been different and if Clinton had nominated the spouse of a current Democratic senator. Sort of like the way that, no matter what Trump does, Reps. Issa and Chaffez will have recurrent attacks of situational blindness and deafness.

If you are male and you were born after 1953, you have never been at risk for being drafted. The last no-shit draft lottery was held in 1972 for men born in 1953. Of those born that year, only 646 were drafted. My recollection is that all of them were offered discharges around mid-1973.

The draft is a relic of a time when wars were fought by masses of soldiers who had received a few months of training (if that) and then were sent into combat. That was a time when wars were fought (or planned to be) between nations that had roughly equal military abilities. Wars of those types were known for chewing up men and materiel on a very large scale.[1]

As a nation, we aren't very damn likely to get into that type of war. The navy sure doesn't think so, or they wouldn't be buying those littoral combat ships and calling them "frigates". There isn't the industrial base to turn out masses of tanks, fighters or bombers that would be lost in combat. Hell, during Vietnam, the usage of bombs was so high that the ones being shipped from the States late n the war were still warm from the pouring of their explosive cores.[2]

Even when we had a functioning industrial base and we could make damn near anything, the first two years after we entered the Second World War were more of "hold and annoy" strategy until sufficient forces were built up to do something.

It would also take a span of time to build training facilities for a large influx of draftees. The Navy and the Air Force each only have one boot camp. The Marines have two. The Army has four. During the last mass-mobilization war, the Army alone had over 110 boot camps, though to be fair, the Air Force was part of the Army then. It's a fair bet that the training done was as minimal as it could be, given the need to increase throughput.

The point is that even having every man (and maybe woman) registered is almost useless. After registration, there is no requirement to keep the Selective Service people updated on one's whereabouts. Further, everyone has a social security number and if they have a job, the IRS knows where they are (or recently have been).

The shell of the draft system could still be there, with a requirement that, upon activation of the draft, that everybody register for it-- just as was done during both world wars.

For now, registering for the draft is a useless paper drill. It should be abolished most ricky tick.
_________________________________[1] One brief example: During the Second World War, the U.S. built about 10,000 B-25s. Maybe 2,000 were ever operational at one time. Most were lost from being shot up, shot down or crashes.
[2] This is not a new problem, see "The 1915 Shell Crisis", when the Royal Artillery Corps was so short of heavy shells that they could fire their guns four times a day.

The three-way dance between the United States, Taiwan and China has been going on for over 40 years. Leave it to Trump to tromp around like an elephant in a chicken factory.

The Chinese are, for the moment, willing to cut Trump some slack on this; they're blaming Taiwan for it. But they certainly know that Trump could have refused to have taken the call. Which is something that anyone who had more than a Twitter-based knowledge level of Sino-American relations would have known not to have done.

So far, I have yet to note a single appointment of anyone who has a track record of sticking up for the working stiffs of America. Between a troll who wants to set fire to what's left of the social safety net and banksters, Trump's picks sound more like hiring the firm of Kyd, Teach and Roberts to defend the sea lanes.

As the cops are gradually realizing, when you do stupid shit in full view of other people, somebody's probably recording your antics. And, should your stupidity be of the sort that becomes widely known, it will fuck up your life.

I'm not writing her name, but it's easily findable. Unless the Klan or Breitbart is hiring, she's going to have a hell of a time finding a job where the human resources department does any bit of research on job candidates.

Rule No. 5: Terms of Service: Political appointees of the Obama and Bush Administrations may not read this blog unless they (i) post a comment confessing same and (ii) acknowledge that both men are war criminals. This blog may not be read by members of the Arizona Legislature.

Violation of this term is a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C) and you're off to share a cell with Chris Christie, asswipe.

Rule No. 6: If I wanted you to write a "guest post", I'd ask you. Don't bother asking me to put one up from you. I won't. Start yer own goddamn blog.You Have Been Warned.